Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

May 8 2008

Am I Annoying You? Here, Have Some Coffee

After a day of cane practice, I'm off to work this AM and hoping to make it through the day without any further mishaps. I'm also hoping that someone takes pity on me and helps me carry things from my car to the office as I seem to have quite the bundle of shtuff.

Asking for help doesn't come easy to me. Fortunately, I work for a social service agency, so I am pretty much surrounded all day by professional nurturers. I'm figuring that if I look perplexed and/or pathetic, someone will come to my aid. The reward for whoever helps will be a wonderful pot of coffee, once the new coffee maker actually enters the office.

On Sunday I roasted Colombia Huila - Las Piedras de San Augustin and now, with four days rest, it is truly magnificent. I am itching to share it with my co-workers, several of whom are definitely coffee fiends. In his review, Tom (of Sweet Marias) says: "I would rank this as a top "crowd-pleaser" coffee." That's what I was going for today, and I think I nailed the roast.

I drink coffee like some people drink wine and all too often, what I like about a particular bean is just not what folks think of when talking coffee. And while people generally are amazed when they find that some coffee I am sharing has a hit of blueberry in the cup, it seems that there are a whole lot of folks who are looking for something more archetypically coffee like. This is the coffee for them.

And given that I am going to be a bigger pain in the butt than usual for the next two to three months, bringing in crowd pleaser coffee, from time to time, seems like a very wise move.

posted by taming at 04:16 | link | comments (2)|
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May 7 2008

Note From an Old Hippy

I tend to ignore it whenever my body misbehaves by showing its age in the form of creaks and pains. Sure, I'm inching up toward 60, but I've always figured that I can ignore that teeny tiny bit of truth.

The result is that I sometimes ignore things that I should pay attention to—for example, a (slightly) fractured hip.

About ten days ago, I fell on the ice. It was what, in the world of babies learning to walk, is known as "fall down and go boom". That is, I landed directly on my not-very-well-padded bum. At the time, I congratulated myself for not having stuck out my arm and ending up with a sprained wrist. In fact, I felt just fine for about three days.

When I woke up on day four, it felt like someone had hit me on the hip with a curling rock. I blamed it on the nighttime accommodations made to my bed partners (that would be two cats and my fella). When it hurt worse after a trip down the stairs, I figured my body was looking for an excuse to call in sick to work. I didn't, of course, and I have been trudging to work each day as the pain got worse and worse.

Yesterday I realized that it was nigh on time for this to be over, no matter what the cause, and I went to the doctor and then for x-rays. Yup, I had a fracture, and no matter how much I tried it wasn't going away any time soon.

I may be moving out of the downstairs cave and into the upstairs cave for a few weeks. Stairs are a real problem just now. At home, it means the moving of my desktop computer from our subterranean office/family room to the above ground portion of the house. I could do the laptop in bed thing, but I am a desktop kinda gal.

It also means a part-time separation from Ron. It's one thing to move my computer and associated paraphernalia, but it's quite another to move his set-up too. That would mean moving not just a computer, but also a big screen TV, the TiVO, and all the other techie toys associated with his life.

I, however, get all of the coffee making equipment. Fair is fair.

posted by taming at 03:34 | link | comments (8)|
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May 5 2008

Clan of the Cave Bean

I'm in the process of moving into my office at work. Now, I've had that same cave-like space for over a year, but up until now, I haven't actually worked in there for more than a few hours a week. It's not that I didn't have scads of paperwork that I could have done in the office; I just didn't have enough time during the day to do my work with clients in their homes and get into the office as well. I did my paperwork on-line at home.

This is changing. Beginning next week, I have what appears to be a regular job. That means I will be working 8-4:30, Monday through Friday and most of the time, I will be a cave-dweller.

And, it is truly cave like. There are no windows in any of the offices. My office is down in the basement, toward the back of the building. On the plus side, that means my office is fairly cool in the summer (Air conditioning? This is Alberta, we don't need no stinkin' air conditioning.) and it doesn't turn into a steam bath when the heat is on in the winter. It is also quiet down there. Very, very quiet.

On the minus side, the office kitchen, where the coffee is located, is upstairs.

I pondered this sorry state of affairs for almost seven minutes before I came up with a solution. Now, it's not like the office coffee is drinkable, because it's not. We have a second rate coffee pot and big red plastic bins of Folgers. It took me seven minutes to arrive at a solution only because I was not sure if I could be considered a team player if I ran out and bought my own coffee equipment before I actually moved into my space.

I also had to think of a sensible way to explain to my husband that I was about to spend in the neighbourhood of $300 on yet more coffee equipment when I wasn't actually getting a raise.

It turned out that this wasn't all that difficult. When I called my husband and told him that I was being brought "inside", he asked me if I had ordered the coffee equipment from work, or if I was planning on waiting until I got home that night.

I guess the man knows me pretty well.

posted by taming at 02:45 | link | comments (6)|
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May 3 2008

Hi There

Yes, I'm alive. It's been such an odd few months, with so many long days filled with things I can't talk about publicly that even trying to blog was beyond me. I still can't talk about them, but, at long last, my job has changed and since my work will not consume 60 hours a week or be entirely confidential, I might even be able to write here occasionally.

Coffee continues to be an obsession. This morning's cup is Idido Misty Valley roasted to FC+ on five days rest. I have annoyed the heck out of some of my roasting buddies by not being in love with this bean roasted light. See why I haven't blogged?

I've had moments of techie joy and came close to writing about my love affair with my MP3 player and my frustration with my cell phone. Close.

In any case, I'm writing this AM, and I might even write again fairly soon.